


Paints and Brushstrokes

by Atacama



Series: Paints, Brushstrokes & Extraordinary Canvas [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Dark, M/M, POV Third Person, Sex Toys, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 03:58:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3342812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atacama/pseuds/Atacama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you can almost measure time in years, amidst your own Eternity, the memory of a time when desperate, barren adoration shattered you and kept you together</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paints and Brushstrokes

**Author's Note:**

> The last thing I ever wrote for any fandom. Not that I ever wrote very much, but I hope a difference in skill can be felt, at the very least.
> 
> This is dark, and not really a happy ending, but I like to think it's a realistic ending. Due to the style in which it is written I'm not sure if I need to add any additional tags. But please let me know if you feel that I have left anything out.

You’d been sleeping together for months by then. You could both almost measure the time in years, but not quite and you were sure that neither of you ever would. There was too much of an air of permanence in using that equivalent for quantifying time. 

You said sleeping, though technically it was fucking. The sort of messy fucking that came after too many sleepless nights. The sort of desperate fucking that came after witnessing too much violence and death and the worst that the universe had to offer. The sort of frantic, needy fucking that came from trying to find your own life in someone else’s body. The sort of fucking that finished with both of you falling asleep, through no fault of your own because wherever either of you fell; bodies barely shifting to accommodate one another, in a too narrow bed; you slept. 

You slept till you woke up - so deeply that being in the same bed as someone else was irrelevant. There was no holding, kicking or stealing of covers. There was no sweetness or acceptance. There was simply no choice. Your bodies chose for you and they would have chosen sleep over company every single time. It was just that your bed was closer and you couldn’t seem to bring yourself to waste those unimportant, simple minutes of ‘connection’ before you surrendered yourself to peaceful nothingness.

You weren’t sure whether he’d ever been with a man before you. You’d never asked and he’d never seemed interested in telling you. Nothing about him, not words or body or face told you anything that he didn’t reveal; out loud with those self-same forms of expression. 

The first few times you’d been together, soon after _the_ revelation he’d been empty and needy both at the same time. Eyes so blank it almost scared you. His legs wrapped round your hips so tightly and his fingers dug into your back so painfully it was almost as if he were terrified you’d let go. 

You hadn’t let go; even though at the time you weren’t sure whether it was because you were his punishment or his sanity. 

You were afraid of being either.

It was after the cannibals, that you realise things began to change. That day, when he must have stood still while life and death fought over him and then finally, when neither could tip the scale in their favour the two opposing forces had turned to him and left him to choose his own fate. You were quite sure that he had hesitated for a moment, not quite sure whether life truly was worthwhile but in the end you also knew exactly which side he’d picked. You liked to fool yourself with the idea that you might have been the feather that weighted the scale on the side of life.

It was after that moment, that choice, that breath, that things changed. He began to turn you down if he didn’t feel like being with you or accept you if he did. The proof though was that at least he was feeling… something; something that wasn’t blank, terrifying, emptiness. 

He still had his moments. Moments like when you’d sucked his fingers and looked up at him and he’d been staring at you but seeing something else entirely because you weren’t sure he was even in the same room as you. You’d stopped immediately and sucked his cock instead. Then he’d come back to you.

You’d begun to experiment, pushing at each other’s boundaries sexually and emotionally, had even begun to discuss certain likes and dislikes and stopped one or the other of you from overstepping the boundaries you’d established. Maybe you’d even started to unconsciously shift your bodies to adjust to the others presence when you slept.

Then you’d left and ruined it all.

He had always subbed. Mostly because his life was already all about control and you assumed that he wanted to give it up from time to time. It didn’t even occur to you that it was the way things would always be. There wasn’t a top and a bottom in your relationship, no strong or weak. There were no clear lines to define your roles. There was no clarity what-so-ever in anything and you didn’t particularly try to find it in each other or what you shared. That would have been a responsibility neither of you would have wanted.

You tied him up and he gasped and writhed. He whimpered when you blindfolded him. Cried out when you whipped him. Each step you took was met equally, with strength and surrender and you weren’t sure if it was trust or indifference that made him let you do whatever you wanted to him. Maybe he just couldn’t quite bring himself to care about how he could’ve ended up; if you hadn’t known exactly what you’d been doing. 

You used toys on him you _knew_ he’d never even dreamt of before because they weren’t from this time or place. Each one was considered with the same studied, apathetic interest and it didn’t seem to matter whether you explained exactly what it would do to him or left him guessing, he acted just as unsurprised and unimpressed, regardless.

It drove you crazy and sometimes you saw an almost invisible quirk in his lips that told you he was quite aware of that.

Once you’d come back, your privileges had been revoked. You still had sex… great mind-blowing sex you might even still remember in a thousand years. But there were no games, no props, no toys. There was no trust. 

When you’d asked him about it he’d looked at you for the longest time as if he were staring the words stupid onto your forehead. He’d replied with mild reproach that trust went both ways; that your disappearing act was, without a doubt generally unacceptable, but that it had also forced him to face sides of your character he’d either ignored or been ignorant of and he had never been one for trying to deny something; once it had made itself undeniable. 

You’d raised an eyebrow and he’d asked politely whether you wanted him to elaborate. You’d winced but said yes. 

He told you that he’d never considered the fact that you had a certain amount of disregard for the people around you and that he couldn’t care less about your choices where work and employees were concerned, and if you found it necessary to distance yourself in that way, that was your own prerogative after all. However in bed, they became his and so the situation that you had both so casually accepted a few months ago was now unacceptable to him.

You had tried to explain and it had surprised you how much you cared about his opinion of you. You’d tried to justify yourself. You replied that there were things that he couldn’t understand.

He’d returned calmly, that was where the trust issue came in and that your apparent bad taste in sociopaths didn’t help much either. 

You tried again, almost smiling at his obvious snub.

He interrupted you and told you to accept the fact that the balance had changed and it would take more than your weak, meaningless excuses to force it back.

You’d accepted it. And everything had carried on in the same way except for those uncomfortable moments when your fingers tightened round his wrists or you’d glance up while teasing inside him with your tongue, a thought half formed in your head and he’d freeze and wait until you remembered again that whatever it was you’d almost done, was not allowed anymore.

There was still a sort of intimacy between you both - the sort of intimacy that came naturally after long association. 

The sort of intimacy that couldn’t be avoided once you knew that stroking gently up the soft, sensitive skin of the inside of his thighs made his breathing calm and his lungs sigh so you made sure to do so regularly. 

The sort of intimacy that existed once he found out that moving his lips along the underside of your jaw, tickled, made you shiver and want to laugh and ruined the mood when things were intense, but it didn’t stop him from doing so. 

The sort of intimacy that couldn’t be denied when you woke up in each others company more often than not. Once you figured out that your usual morning, upbeat, happy energy, pissed him the fuck off until he’d had at least two cups of coffee. Once you figured out that you’d only get laid in the mornings before work if you woke him gently, with your cock already half way up his asshole, your hand cradling his soft prick and your pelvis pressed up to his hips as you kept up an intense, undulating, never ending pressure on his prostate. Once you noticed that he never topped in the mornings ‘cause he was lazy and that he didn’t think that was a character trait that cried out for self-improvement, it was his one glaring fault and he couldn’t bring himself to care and neither could you even when you realised that an early morning orgasm did nothing to improve his mood but coffee worked it's magic each and every time, and that it didn’t even occur to you to be offended.

Intimacy really couldn’t be avoided once all that became so routine you didn’t even think about it when it happened anymore.

But everything changed after Grey.

Nothing was the same anymore. Not life, not death, not family - past or present, not pain, not even you… especially not you. Time continued regardless, you reflected; when you remembered to reflect.

Sex changed. Of course it changed. What it stood for, what it meant, what you took from it. What he let you take from it, from him, in desperation, in need, in love, in hate, in flesh. He held you in his arms, was there for you and loved you in whatever way you needed him to. It was so beautifully fucked up that it was _this_ that had him handing you back the rope, the cuffs, the whip… the trust.

Or maybe it was that you’d both just started at the beginning once more, a circle that never ended because you just began again. Maybe he was doing that thing that he’d done when all this had first started, where he stopped caring about the outcome, about what could happen to him if you got carried away. 

He said, that back then he’d just been ignorant of all the many, _many_ reasons why he shouldn’t have trusted you. But you’re sure now, that back then, there had been a moment, a second, when he’d gone from not caring if you hurt him to trusting that you wouldn’t. You’d missed it of course, the moment. It had passed you by in all your narcissistic oblivion.

You weren’t oblivious anymore but you still didn’t know what the answer was.


End file.
